Post by Doug HoffmanIn article
Post by Ed BerosetPost by Doug HoffmanPost by Ed BerosetPeople responding to this seem to be unaware that there is a whole
industry devoted to just this sort of "hacking." Engine tuning by
"chipping" the car (i.e. replacing the firmware in the engine control
unit) is pretty common, especially for performance cars. As one
example, see http://www.goapr.com/Porsche/products/ecu_upgrade_996tt.html
for a company which offers not only a replacement chip but a whole
aftermarket replacement ECU for the Porsche twin-turbo 996.
Sure, you can do that. You can even remove your catalytic converter, as
a private citizen (at least in the US). A business would be liable for
a $10,000 fine for each vehicle it tampered with. But if your state or
region implements a "smog check" program where your vehicle must pass
inspection every year or two in order to get re-registered, you will be
up a creek.
You assume, incorrectly, that a chipped car won't pass a smog check.
That's my assumption, except it is probably correct. Read on.
No, it's incorrect. "Read on."
Actually, when I originally posted on this thread, I was more interested
in accessing less-critical aspects of the car's functionality. E.g., a
lot of cars turn the headlights on by themselves nowadays: I hate that!
If the car was running Linux, or was otherwise open-source-accessible,
maybe I could fix that kind of thing. Maybe I'd like to put a PWM dimmer
on the headlights while I was at it (go ahead, whine about the legality
of altering the lighting equipment: I still want to). And all that
beeping and chiming, when seatbelts are not fastened or whatever? History.
I hate electronic things that make noise, just about always.
But WRT engine mods, and (in the case of automatic transmissions)
transmission mods, etc.: who says one has to choose, either stock *or*
modified? Maybe one does now, when modifications mean an entirely
new chip (or new EPROM). But if the car was properly "hackable", it
would seem obvious to preserve the "factory" behaviour as one possible
setting. Sure, if I was afraid I was going to *lose* the factory
settings if I touched anything, then maybe I wouldn't do it. But given
the factory settings as an always-available fallback, I'd be much more
inclined to try tweaking it a little, see if I could get more power, etc.;
and of course, on "emissions day", I'd just flip the switch back to
"factory". Of course, this highlights one reason why there is probably
significant government (if not industry) resistance to making the car
hackable. They don't want you to do that, any more than they want you
to have movable baffles in the exhaust pipe of your Harley, that can
switch between "performance" and "legal" modes.
So you can argue about why the government, or society, shouldn't allow
me to hack on my car; but your argument that my acknowledged inexperience
in performance tuning is a reason not to do it, doesn't hold water to me.
(Besides, if a given brand of car did have an explicitly open/hackable
architecture, you can be sure newsgroups and websites would pop up in
abundance, trading info on how to do mods. I guess they already exist,
as others have noted, but so far it's mostly against the clear will of
the manufacturers. I want to be able to download new code via an IR
port in the dash!)
Post by Doug HoffmanPost by Ed BerosetIn fact, if you read the disclaimer more carefully, you'll see that the
manufacturer is simply saying that they don't guarantee that it will
pass, but this is as likely as not because they are unwilling to take on
the burden of formal testing and documentation to EPA specifications
than that the engines actually pollute more.
You have experience calibrating today's spark ignition engines for high
performance and low emissions? It doesn't sound like it.
You think this aftermarket chip tuner can out-do the Porsche engineers
by simultaneously improving performance of the Porsche product while
still meeting the (stringent) emissions standards? Don't you think if
that were the case Porsche would simply buy the chips and install them
in all their production cars (and fire their engineers)? Sorry, your
logic fails.
Stock "anything" (cars, whatever) are usually designed to satisfy a
complicated morass of compromises and conflicting requirements.
Maybe the Porsche guys had to back off from the max performance a
little in order to hit the emission standards. Maybe they make all
the cars able to meet California standards, or some (hypothetical)
European standards, which might be more stringent than other parts
of the USA. Maybe they had a higher-performance mode, but it made
the idle a little rough, and the suits said no way, we can't sell
a car for 100,000$ with a rough idle, it has more than enough
performance anyway, back it off a little. Who knows? Not you,
not me. One thing's for sure, I *don't* trust that no better results
are possible for a given individual, and I *do* want the power to play
around. Your naysaying doesn't scare me a bit. :)
Post by Doug HoffmanRegards,
-Doug
p.s. There's usually more to a smog check than just measuring the
tailpipe emissions. The onboard diagnostics are usually queried at the
check station and there had better not be any faults or other strange
readings. Since the OBD fault algorithms are closely tied to the
calibration of the engine, these "tuner" chips had better have taken all
of that into account as well as keeping the emissions squeaky clean. My
money is on the Porsche engineers, not the "chippers" or any individual
hackers.
I betcha the "individual hackers" could figure out exactly how to make
the system still pass all the checks and behave in all the right ways.
Just look at the feats of reverse engineering that have been accomplished
by various "individual hackers", writing open-source drivers for various
obscure hardware in the computing arena (often uncovering and fixing bugs
and/or attaining better performance than the proprietary code written
by the "experts"). I'm surprised someone in a Forth group would exhibit
such apparent disdain for hackers. It's not wise to underestimate them.
(BTW, just a guess, but I betcha a number of the Porsche engineers own
motorcycles or oddball/vintage sports cars, which they tinker with in
their spare time, and they'd probably scoff at the suggestion that they
should just trust the manufacturers and not change anything.)
--Benjamin